


girls like you

by firstaudrina



Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, F/F, Reference to past bullying, Sapphic September, Vanilla
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:15:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26292499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: She always knew Addy had a penchant for self-deception, but she thought it was an open secret, denial with a wink and a nudge. How could Addy bury things so completely — a kiss in the rain, a hand under the covers, the way she dug her fingers into Beth’s knotted muscle — when Beth couldn’t even walk through the mall without wanting to puke from the smell of her body spray?
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon
Comments: 19
Kudos: 71





	girls like you

That’s Addy, the warm and musky scent of mall vanilla, purchased from the sale bin on Black Friday at Victoria’s Secret or Bath and Body. A little chemical and sharp but worn-down warm underneath, in Beth’s lungs during sleepovers when she presses her nose to the back of Addy’s neck or even just buries her face in the pillow. Half the girls on the squad wear the same scent but Beth can pick it out on Addy even in a locker room stinking of post-practice sweat and similar spritzing. 

That smell feels like it’s mocking her, after everything. It feels like a hit to the gut, or maybe an idiot’s foot to the front teeth.

Coach has a rarified smell, a cultivated and expensive something that makes girls say, _damn Coach what IS that_ , whenever they walk by her. In response, Coach will say, _You here to cheer or to tell me how good I smell?_ But the answer was both, for most of them, because they found her almost as inexplicably dazzling as Addy did. They couldn’t see how calculating it all was — the big girl boots and perfectly pressed hair, such a Cool Girl, pretty and tough at once. Beth saw the perfume bottle on her dresser during — after the hotel party. It was the same Jo Malone shit every Instagram influencer shilled. She probably got it every Christmas and birthday from Mr. Coach. She was a dime a dozen. 

_I know girls like you_ , Coach says. _I was girls like you_.

And Beth wants to say, _That’s a pretty big case of narcissism, Coach, because there’s not a molecule of you in me_. But she only smirks and says, “You think so, huh?” Lets the words linger and the silence stretch, still smiling, long enough for Coach to get that notch between her eyebrows that means she’s recalibrating. 

_Don’t play games with me, Cassidy_ , she says, and she probably thinks she’s a big scary threat, all five foot blonde of her. 

“That’s the thing with you game-players,” Beth tells her. “You think everyone else is playing, too.”

_I bet you drink frosé, bitch_ , Beth thinks viciously. _I bet you go out for brunch with your girlfriends and pretend you don’t have fangs_.

Beth can’t figure out if Addy likes the taste of the lie, or if she’s just dumb enough to be duped. She always knew Addy had a penchant for self-deception, but she thought it was an open secret, denial with a wink and a nudge. How could Addy bury things so completely — a kiss in the rain, a hand under the covers, the way she dug her fingers into Beth’s knotted muscle — when Beth couldn’t even walk through the mall without wanting to puke from the smell of her body spray? 

Vanilla is safe, and maybe that’s why Addy chose it; it’s innocuous, it blends in, nobody feels enough about vanilla to hate it. The girls can pass those bottles from hand to hand and Addy can feel nestled in their welcoming conformity. But Beth knows. If Coach is a basic bitch masquerading as something more, then Addy is the opposite. She can only be a bad girl if she’s acting in Beth’s name, and so Beth was as bad as she could be, because that’s what Addy liked. It got her blood hot. She would look at Beth over some poor bullied girl’s head with fire in her eyes that Beth felt all through her body, the same tingle of being Top Girl. Top Girl and Addy’s girl, it was the same to Beth, interchangeable, until all of them were Coach’s girls instead. 

Once during a freshman year sleepover, Beth and Addy dared a girl to drink a bottle of vanilla extract. They gathered around her like a swarm of mosquitos, but she only got halfway through before she gagged and ran off to the bathroom to puke. To prove it could be done, Beth finished the bottle, eyes locked with Addy’s. It felt Shakespearean. It felt like drinking poison, and it burned all the way down. It made her eyes smart and water but she smiled, leaned in close to Addy so she could breathe on her. _Do I smell sweet?_

_Not the word I’d use_ , Addy teased , and closed Beth’s mouth with a finger on her chin. _But I like it_.

Beth doesn’t wear perfume. She guesses that’s why she can’t seem to haunt Addy anywhere.


End file.
